The Bride of Texas (71 page)

“But not against Indians!” exclaimed the cigar-maker, obviously obsessed with the fear of losing his scalp. Unlike the butcher, he still had a thick head of hair, which he had recently — perhaps preventively — trimmed short
.

Colonel Ohrenzug was furious and threatened to cancel the order for the red trousers. If he weren’t such an old man, he said, he would even go and fight the Eskimos, if need be
.

“They’re no danger,” retorted the cigar-maker. “And besides, Hubatty already has cut the fabric for the trousers.”

“Who cares?” said Colonel Ohrenzug. “So I sell them, maybe at a profit, to the Swedish zouaves. I hear they’ve organized a company too, in Decorah, Iowa.”

“You can’t do that,” objected Padecky. “Zouaves wear Turkish trousers.”

“They can be altered,” retorted Colonel Ohrenzug
.

“Then we’d take your picture down!” Kafka said with malice in his voice
.

“Go right ahead,” said the colonel. “Do I want my picture to hang over a bunch of cowards? I’d rather buy the synagogue a new Torah and get my picture hung there.”

“Pictures aren’t allowed in the synagogue!” said Kafka triumphantly
.

The cigar-maker broke in: “I won’t be insulted. I’m no coward!” He got up to leave
.

“It’s just that you’ve got a family,” said Shake
.

“So have I!” the butcher chimed in. “And I won’t be insulted either!” He too got up, but not before quickly finishing his beer
.

In the end, they managed to calm the two men down and Colonel Ohrenzug retracted his threat. They resolved that an addendum to the petition be sent to the governor, explicitly stating that the company must not be sent to fight Indians, and setting limits to the types of active service that the company could be called upon to perform. On the urging of the faction eager to do battle, led by Lusk and Salek, the more circumspect elements finally agreed to add that Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles would be willing to fight if the Southern slave-holders attacked Chicago, after Padecky reassured them once more that there wasn’t going to be a war. They
composed the addendum on the spot, and Shake offered to deliver it personally to the governor
.

Later that night, he put a match to it
.

The dismounted general barked an order, and the column spread out along the hills on both sides of the road. A scout appeared around a bend in the road and dashed to the head of the column to deliver his news to the staff. Several soldiers approached the wall of bushes on the edge of the woods, where Shake and Houska were lying observing the unfamiliar unit.

“Hey,” Shake heard Houska whisper beside him, “isn’t that Pepik Balda?”

The soldier nearest the bushes had a snub nose not unlike Houska’s, and on his feet were boots of a decorative quilted leather that were obviously not government issue.

“Yes, it’s him!” Houska said. “So this must be the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin!”

“Mower’s division,” said Shake. “So we made it through, then. We’re on the extreme right wing.”

“At least there won’t be a lot happening here. Pepik!” Houska yelled, and crawled out of the bushes.

The soldier in the quilted boots first greeted Houska by aiming his musket at him, but then he recognized the tattered Union cap, and finally the moon-face of his countryman from Manitowoc.

Officers and sergeants fanned out from the general and ran to their units bellowing orders. In a few minutes, Shake, Houska, Zinkule in his tails, and Breta, along with the rest of the Twenty-fifth Wisconsin, were attacking the wretched grey line of defence at the bend in the road. Their company led the
attack and lost only seven men. The soldier with the nonregulation boots was among the casualties.

They continued to drill while Hubatty sewed the trousers. Then a message came from the governor instructing the company to pick up their weapons, and the following day bayonets flashed on the meadow behind Slavik’s Tavern as four-man ranks of Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles strutted before the women more smartly than ever before. Following Captain Mihalotzy’s orders, they carried out complex manoeuvres in perfect unison, as if they were a group of Prussian professionals training for an imperial review, not an amateur volunteer militia
.

In the first rank, the cigar-maker Kabrna had a determined look on his face, and his legs swung back and forth in the one pair of red trousers Hubatty had brought as a sample. He glowed like a cherry in the presence of the largest gathering of applauding women to date, one that included his own seven-member family. The men were still drilling tirelessly at sundown, when the metallic glint of bayonets looked particularly menacing and the red trousers glowed brightly in the dusk. During the post-drill drinking party, another twenty-seven men joined the ranks of Lincoln’s Slavonic Rifles. Even before they could be properly registered and the gratified Colonel Ohrenzug could order more trousers, something happened that would alter the face and the fate of the Slavonic company
.

The governor had provided two cartridges with each of the old Mexican muzzle-loaders, so at the next training session Captain Mihalotzy demonstrated the proper way to load a musket. After a break, they were to try some target practice with a life-size figure. The captain drew the outline of a man in chalk on the back of an old sign donated by Salek-Cup, nailed a brace on the back, and
stood it up in the corner of the exercise grounds in front of Slavik’s wooden storage shed. Mihalotzy had drawn a pair of trousers and a jacket with two rows of buttons on the figure, and he had added a heart on the left side of its chest. When he called a break, some of the men hurried to the tavern, and the rest went to talk to the women. The only exception was Vasek Lusk, who went over to the figure and began going at it with his bayonet. From the dreamy expression on his face, it was easy to tell that in his imagination he was far from the meadow behind Slavik’s Tavern, on a battlefield in the middle of some bloody hand-to-hand encounter. It was almost dark, which helped to reinforce his fantasy
.

Captain Mihalotzy was chatting with the ladies, twirling his waxed moustache around his finger as if he were in the lounge bar at the opera in Pest. Something had to happen because, on battlefields, shots are fired
.

“Did Lusk fire a shot?” asked Houska
.

“What else?” said Shake. “Not only that, his aim was excellent, though as a matter of fact he didn’t take aim. He hit the figure not in the heart but in the right knee, and when he did there was a shriek of pain.”

“The shot ricocheted?” said Stejskal
.

“No, it went through the sign. The trouble was, Padecky had gone behind it to take a leak, because there was a lineup for the toilet.”

“Did you wear the red trousers at the funeral?” Fisher asked
.

“Padecky wasn’t killed,” said Shake. “But he was still out of commission when we were unexpectedly called up not long afterwards. The ball had hit his left knee and it was still in plaster. Fortunately they didn’t have to amputate, but even when he got better his leg was as stiff as a stump and he limped. And Vasek Lusk didn’t go to war with us either, for all he had soldiering in his blood.”

“Why not?” asked Stejskal. “That sort of thing can happen to
anybody. I had a rifle go off in my hand three times, and once I shot Captain Lidwell’s cigar to bits as he was about to stick it in his mouth, and his beard caught fire from the burning tobacco.”

“What did he give you?” asked Houska, intrigued
.

“I had to walk around the camp for three days with a sign that said, I ALMOST SHOT CAPTAIN LIDWELL. The sign was in two sections, like a sandwich board, but some wag got hold of it at night and added, TOO BAD YOUR AIM AIN’T BETTER! to the back half and I never noticed, not even when so many of my buddies started ribbing me. Usually it’s just a few jackasses who laugh. Finally Colonel Brummel stopped me and he wouldn’t believe I didn’t know about it, so he stuck me in a disciplinary squad for a week and I had to work on the palisades with three deserters who’d been condemned to death and then pardoned by Lincoln.”

“What happened to Lusk?” asked Zinkule
.

“Nothing. He ran away and disappeared,” said Shake. “He probably withered away from shame.”

The bridge was already in full sight, and the rain had started to come down harder again. For two hours now they had been marching double-time and running, and they’d been through several skirmishes. They kept encountering groups of armed men trying to link up with larger units to create a continuous line of defence. One wandering squadron of Wheeler’s cavalry managed to slow them down, but they wiped it out of the way. General Mower was still marching in the ranks of the company heading his division. They forded a marsh, crossed a rise, and there was the bridge. Ambulances were slowly trundling across it, and sparsely placed riflemen lay in hurriedly dug pits along the banks of the creek, defending the gateway to safety. As soon as the first blue line appeared over the rise, they opened fire.

The order came to retreat. Behind a cluster of rocks, Shake said to Houska, “Is this enough for you? Or, as a man who wants to return home a hero, do you have higher standards?”

“Always the joker. Just wait, some day you’ll be laughing on the other side of your face,” said Houska, rolling over on his back. “Something’s going on in the rear,” he said.

Shake turned to see an officer gallop across the meadows among the soldiers, and stop in front of Mower’s staff. Shake glanced at the sky. The clouds were breaking up. He saw Mower making authoritative gestures, then saw orderlies scatter in all directions. The lieutenant commanding the company they had joined hollered, “Fall back!”

“What for?” snapped Houska.

“A soldier doesn’t question, a soldier obeys!” said Shake, rising.

They soon found out why. Strong squads of Rebel cavalry had attacked the division’s left flank from the front and Mower was concentrating all his forces against them.

They were running towards a few isolated trees where they were to take up defensive positions when they caught sight of the Rebel cavalry, a cluster of wild riders galloping up to the trees, their reins in their teeth, beards flying in the wind. Each rider had a heavy navy pistol in each hand and was blazing away. The squad scattered. Shake ducked to the right of the lead rider, and as he did so he glimpsed Houska diving into the grass, Zinkule’s tails fluttering, and Breta on one knee, firing at the second wave of riders. One of them veered to the left and cut off Shake’s retreat to the hedge the rattle of gunfire was coming from. Shake hesitated; the rider swung his horse around and started towards him. Shake, his rifle slung over his back, sprinted towards a grove of pine trees and clambered up one of them. The rider didn’t waste a shot on him, but just rode around the grove to join the next wave of attack. From his
perch in the pine tree, Shake saw Hardee’s wild warriors gathering for a fresh assault. He heard gunfire and the boom of cannon around him, all the way to the north. Suddenly the clouds parted, the sun came out, and a rainbow formed over the heads of the wild riders. Shake looked around. He could see several dead men on the grass between the grove and the hedge, and a horse lying on its side. The rider placed a navy pistol to the horse’s head and fired; the horse jerked and went limp and the rider dropped behind it for shelter.